Improving service, with your help

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Tuesday, December 10, 2013 12:01:00 PM

From Brian Lamb, Metro Transit General Manager

In recent years, Metro Transit has spent considerable time planning for light rail and Bus Rapid Transit. While these efforts will continue, we also want to focus attention on the expansion of the regular-route bus system that serves as the foundation of what we do. That's where the Service Improvement Plan comes in.

The Service Improvement Plan we're creating will serve as the blueprint for prioritized improvements as our bus system develops over the next 10 to 15 years. It's an important piece of work and we look forward to working with our partners and customers as the vision takes shape.

To begin putting the Service Improvement Plan together, we assembled what we have already been hearing from our customers and stakeholders. Throughout the year, planners have analyzed suggestions we have received through Customer Relations and other project-specific outreach efforts. Some suggestions are very detailed route ideas while others are more general.

With these fundamentals in place, we recently asked policymakers and community leaders to participate in workshops that provided an understanding of Metro Transit’s planning principles. In a hands-on exercise, attendees were given maps and yarn that represented available resources, then invited to design a fictional transit system. The exercise illustrated basic planning tradeoffs we face every day. (‘Should I evenly distribute my yarn across all areas of the map to provide low frequency service everywhere or focus on certain areas, providing higher frequency in corridors with more demand?’) Using this understanding, these leaders will begin engaging their constituents and community members to develop additional suggestions we can consider as we work on the Service Improvement Plan.

Through community outreach and direct communication with our customers, we’ll also continue to solicit, collect and analyze feedback. When these efforts conclude in February, staff will draft a plan that prioritizes recommendations for service improvements and present it to the public for additional review. When complete, the Service Improvement Plan will inform the decisions we make as funding for additional service becomes available throughout the years ahead.

As customers who use buses and trains every day, your feedback is important in shaping the Service Improvement Plan. Whether you have ideas about the routes you ride every day, suggestions for new service, or both, I encourage you to participate in this process. You can begin now by completing an online survey at metrotransit.org/sip or by e-mailing your comments to sip@metrotransit.org.